The Technique of Film Editing Second Edition This page intentionally left blank The Technique of Film Editing Second Edition Written and compiled by Karel Reisz and Gavin Millar with the guidance of the following Committee appointed by The British Film Academy Thorold Dickinson (Chairman) , Reginald Beck , Roy Boulting , Sidney Cole , Robert Hamer, Jack Harris , David Lean , Ernest Lindgren , Harry Miller , Basil Wright Introduced by THOROLD DICKINSON AMSTERDAM • BOSTON • HEIDELBERG • LONDON • NEW YORK • OXFORD • PARIS SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO • SINGAPORE • SYDNEY • TOKYO Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier 30 Corporate Drive, Suite 400, Burlington, MA 01803, USA Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK Copyright © 2010 British Academy of Film and Television Arts. All rights reserved. This book was originally published in The Technique of Film Editing by Karel Reisz and Gavin Millar. 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ISBN : 978-0-240-52185-5 For information on all Focal Press publications visit our website at www.elsevierdirect.com 10 11 12 13 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America Contents Publisher ’s Note ix Introduction xi Acknowledgements xv Foreword xix PART I SECTION 1 THE HISTORY OF EDITING 1 Chapter 1 Editing and the Silent Film 3 The Beginnings of Film Continuity 4 Griffi th: Dramatic Emphasis 7 Pudovkin: Constructive Editing 12 Eisenstein: Intellectual Montage 17 Chapter 2 Editing and the Sound Film 25 General 25 Who Edits a Film? 28 The Order of Shots 28 Selection of Camera Set-ups: Emphasis 29 Timing 29 Presentation: Smoothness 30 The Contribution of Editing 38 Special Styles of Editing 41 SECTION 2 THE PRACTISE OF EDITING 47 Chapter 3 Action Sequences 49 Chapter 4 Dialogue Sequences 65 Chapter 5 Comedy Sequences 79 Chapter 6 Montage Sequences 87 Chapter 7 Documentary Reportage 97 Chapter 8 Imaginative Documentary 107 Chapter 9 The Documentary Film of Ideas 127 Chapter 10 The Documentary and the Use of Sound 135 Chapter 11 Educational Films 141 Chapter 12 Newsreels 153 vv Contents Chapter 13 The Compilation Film 163 SECTION 3 PRINCIPLES OF EDITING 177 Chapter 14 Editing the Picture 179 General 179 Constructing a Lucid Continuity: Smoothness 181 Matching Consecutive Actions 181 Extent of Change in Image Size and Angle 183 Preserving a Sense of Direction 186 Preserving a Clear Continuity 188 Matching Tone 189 Making Sound Flow Over a Cut 189 Timing 193 Pace: Rhythm 201 Selection of Shots 206 Chapter 15 Sound Editing 215 General 215 Analysis of a Sound-Track 218 Sound and the Editing of the Picture 226 PART II SECTION 4 THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES 229 Introduction 231 Chapter 16 Widescreen 235 General 235 River of No Return 237 Andr é Bazin 238 Widescreen Examples 239 Chapter 17 Cin é ma-V é rit é and the Documentary Film of Ideas 249 Cin é ma-V é rit é 249 Chronique d’un Et é 251 Le Joli Mai 253 H ô tel des Invalides 266 Chapter 18 Nouvelle Vague 271 Cam é ra-Stylo 271 New Wave 272 vi Contents Chapter 19 Personal Cinema in the Sixties 277 Fran ç ois Truffaut 277 Jean-Luc Godard 290 Alain Resnais 30 1 Michelangelo Antonioni 309 CONCLUSION 323 APPENDIX 325 BIBLIOGRAPHY 327 CUTTING ROOM PROCEDURE 329 Synchronisation of Rushes 329 Editing the Film 330 Opticals 330 Sound Editing 330 GLOSSARY OF TERMS 333 INDEX 341 vii This page intentionally left blank Publisher’s Note to the Enlarged Edition The Technique of Film Editing by Karel Reisz was fi rst published in 1953. It not only had a strong immediate impact, but has remained the standard introduction to its subject ever since and wherever young fi lm-makers are trained. The original English version of the book has been reprinted thirteen times without a word being changed. So it still refl ects the outlook of a time when the craft of fi lm-making seemed to have arrived at conventions and methods of lasting validity. Close on fi fteen years later, many of them have changed considerably. Confronted with the need to take note of these changes, the author decided to update his work by adding a fourth section to it. This new section was contributed by Gavin Millar, in consultation with Karel Reisz. It surveys and records the contemporary approach to fi lm editing by new “ schools ” of fi lm-makers all over the world. Karel Reisz’s original text is reprinted as it was. Any attempt to revise or re-interpret it could only blur its spirit. It would also handicap the reader in forming his own views about the ever-growing momentum of sophistication that went into cinematic expression and perception during the last decade and a half. Professor Thorold Dickinson, then of London University, who twenty-fi ve years ago chaired the guiding com- mittee of the British Film Academy assisting the author in writing this book and who himself wrote the Introduction to its fi rst edition, has now contributed a new Introduction (page 231) followed by a series of notes on passages in the original text which, in his opinion, are no longer valid. A . Kraszna-Krausz ixix This page intentionally left blank Introduction Great Britain has no educational centre where would-be craftsmen can study the technique of the fi lm. Neither is it within the scope or the resources of the British Film Academy to fulfi l this need. The excellent book and fi lm libraries attached to the British Film Institute provide the only reasonable stop-gap for those who are capable of guiding their own education. We , members of the B.F.A. Council, have examined the literature of the cinema, haphazard as it is, with the idea of helping to fi ll the gaps among those subjects which the existing text-books fail to cover. We have found that some crafts like sound recording, set design (or art direction), script writing, even fi lm direction, have in fact been discussed in an articulate manner, but that the pivotal contribution of the fi lm editor has never been analysed objectively. Film editing has only been dealt with in the personal theories of Eisenstein, Pudovkin and others, and only in relation to the styles of cinema of which they have had experience. To fi ll the gap, we approached those among our members who are practised in fi lm editing and found nine volunteers willing to pool their joint experience of a wide range of fi lm styles in shaping an objective intro- duction to their craft. To compile the book we chose, not a fi lm editor who might be biased towards the style of fi lm in which he is expert, but a layman with a scientifi c background and an analytical skill in sifting a maze of material, most of which has never been stated articulately before. Karel Reisz, over months of gruelling experiment, has patiently sifted the relevant technique from the personal reminiscence and has projected miles of fi lm in search of the apt sequence, analysing on a hand projector the chosen sequences, noting every detail and measuring every foot. This collaboration of enthusiasts has resulted in a work which falls into three sections. The fi rst and third are general; the second is drawn from a series of particular statements, each under the control of the appropriate expert or experts. The whole may therefore be regarded as a symposium, bound together by a prologue and an epilogue. Now a word about our use of the words fi lm editing and editor. The responsibility for the editing of a fi lm rests with a number of people— the writer, the director, the editor, the sound-editor and so on. No attempt has xixi The Technique of Film Editing been made to differentiate between these functions. When the word editor is used, it is not necessarily to be taken as reference to the technician working in the cutting room. It simply refers to the person— whoever he may have been— who was responsible for the particular editing decision being discussed. The whole of this book is, in fact, not so much about the specifi c work of the editor as about the process of editing which is usually a far wider responsibility. I must emphasise that we have not tried to write a book of editing theory. With nine fi lm-makers working by choice in different styles — some of whom did not in the fi rst place recognise the value of a theoretical approach— this would surely have proved an impossible task. As I have indicated, we decided to make the best use of our panel by letting each expert supervise the chapter dealing with his own genre. The bulk of the book — contained in Section II — is therefore devoted to practical examples which are analysed by their directors or editors. The gener- alisations which can be drawn from these practical issues are gathered together and summarised in Section III.